Northern Forest Tourism Network
Collaborating to Create a World Class Destination – Join Us!Northern New Hampshire Tourism Conference
By Samantha Kenney Maltais, Project Manager for Northern New Hampshire Marketing Project, a project of Northern Communities Investment Corporation (NCIC)
In May, tourism-based businesses from around the State gathered at the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism held in Portsmouth. The Governor made an appearance to discuss his campaign for reelection; the State Travel and Tourism Department publicly launched their new website and announced benefits available to local businesses and there were two days full of workshops and networking opportunities.
Of the 200 people that attended the conference, only about seven were from Northern New Hampshire.
Looking back, we were able to quickly decipher the reasons for the low attendance rate: the Conference was held in Portsmouth, which is at least a two hour drive for businesses in Coos County and the price was high for an overnight (especially for businesses in the state’s most economically depressed area), which is what many would have needed to do to attend.
The result: The businesses in Coos County and Northern New Hampshire didn’t have access to this valuable information; get a chance to network and build relationships or get new ideas about how to improve their business.
About a month or so later, a member of the New Hampshire Grand Brand Leadership Team was approached with the idea to have a “Northern New Hampshire Tourism Conference” with the goals of providing useful information that could be immediately implemented in business strategies and to connect with other tourism business owners around the area. At the same time, the New Hampshire Grand project was working on centralizing available information related small-business workshops and trainings. Armed with those contacts, the project sought to create the conference.
With that, a partnership between the Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network (WREN), the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) and New Hampshire Grand (NH Grand) came to light. Each group has selected a representative to move the conference forward and collaborate with the other representatives to create the best overall conference possible for the businesses in Coos County.
The group focused heavily on tangible and realistic goals for the day, including the “take home” ideas and information that can be immediately implemented in daily business routines to improve bottom lines. Each representative is responsible for a different piece of the conference, depending on the supporting organizations strengths and capabilities.
The true success of the event can not be measured until after it occurs in November, but the foundation of partnership that it is being built on gives it an excellent foundation for success.
